


left behind

by ameliajessica



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, jeff says the f word a lot, rating only cause rude words, shocker - Freeform, the f word, well one word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1246285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliajessica/pseuds/ameliajessica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff anxiously pushes through the bar, eyes frantically sweeping across the small crowds to find her face. He takes out his phone to call her but the noise inside is too much, the signal not enough. When he steps out, he finally finds her standing outside with her arms crossed over her chest and lets out a breath he was barely aware he had been holding.</p><p>Her eyes meet his, shining with unshed tears and something in his stomach growls protectively. Or hungrily. He hasn’t eaten all day.</p><p>“Wanna get outta here?” he asks.</p><p>She inhales sharply, wiping gently at her eyes and nods quickly. He throws his car keys her way and she catches them in both her hands. “I’ll get your coat.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	left behind

**Author's Note:**

> okay so post-watching 5x04 I was pretty disappointed, particularly with how they chose to deal with annie's character in the episode so this fic was born out of wanting to address some things with headcanons. you'll spot the moment as you read.

So there’s kind of this unspoken agreement between all of them that they’re not really going to be mentioning what happened in the study room today again, or at least any time soon. Abed keeps staring at Troy with his same blank stare except he looks away swiftly whenever Troy looks at him. The rest of the group exchange glances whenever this happens, each of them getting more and more concerned but not knowing what to say, either. When Mr. Stone yells out for them all to do shots, Britta slams her hand down in a “fuck it” kind of way and goes over to the bar with him.

Shirley looks at her watch and apologetically says she should be getting home and awkwardly shuffles out of her seat. Britta comes back with a tray with tequila shots, lime slices and a salt shaker. With exaggerated enthusiasm, she passes the glasses around, giving a particularly pleading look to Jeff and Annie. Annie reluctantly takes it from her. She catches him staring at her incredulously and she just shrugs. “Britta and I have been known to go bar hopping.”

She proceeds to do the most skilled Tequila Slammer he has ever seen, slamming her glass back down with a small wrinkle of her nose. Jeff’s jeans feel tighter.

“Nice,” Abed says.

“Thank you,” she says coolly, not looking at him. He frowns uncertainly at the table and glances at Troy again. When the remainders of the group lapse into silence again Annie huffs impatiently and stands, going to move past Jeff. He had been so momentarily distracted by Annie licking the back of her hand that he is startled by what looks like, to him, Annie going to straddle him.

“What, what are you doing?” he yelps in horror, which in turn scares Annie, and she jumps back.

“I-I was going to go to bathroom,” she says meekly. “If… that’s allowed?”

Jeff laughs nervously. “Yeah, of course, sorry.” Britta narrows her eyes across the table at him momentarily but then reaches for Troy’s shot glass when it’s clear he isn’t going to drink it and downs it quickly.

Annie is gone for ten, and then fifteen and then twenty minutes and Britta is slurrily arguing with Stone about the first amendment (she means the first, but keeps saying fifth), Troy is playing a game on his phone and Abed is tapping a toothpick erratically against the table. “I’m going to go check on Annie,” he announces, though no-one – not even Abed – notices.

He stands outside the ladies’ bathroom for a good time, calling out her name as he cracks open the door hesitantly. Eventually woman goes in, smiling at him appreciatively, but when he asks her to check if someone named ‘Annie’ is in there, her face falls. When she comes back with nothing, he starts to panic.

Jeff anxiously pushes through the bar, eyes frantically sweeping across the small crowds to find her face. He takes out his phone to call her but the noise inside is too much, the signal not enough. When he steps out, he finally finds her standing outside with her arms crossed over her chest and lets out a breath he was barely aware he had been holding.

Her eyes meet his, shining with unshed tears and something in his stomach growls protectively. Or hungrily. He hasn’t eaten all day.

“Wanna get outta here?” he asks.

She inhales sharply, wiping gently at her eyes and nods quickly. He throws his car keys her way and she catches them in both her hands. “I’ll get your coat.”

 * * *

“Do you want Mexican?” he blurts out in the car. “Food,” he adds, just in case it wasn’t clear. “Are you hungry?”

“I hate Mexican food,” she says, sniffing.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“…Really?” he asks disbelievingly.

“I hate spicy food,” she says defensively.

“I am this close to kicking you out of my car,” he tries to joke and while she gives him a smile that says she appreciates the gesture, the tension between them doesn’t disappear; Jeff can make a joke but Pierce is still dead and Troy is still leaving.

“Okay, so no spicy,” he says, because he’s still hungry. “Spicy is out. You like Chinese?”

“I like Chinese,” she says gently.

“Great!” he exclaims despite himself. His outburst actually pulls a soft giggle out of her and the knot in his chest loosens.

They end up in his apartment, Jeff going for his takeout menu drawer that he has. He’s babbling about why he has one at all if he’s meant to be all Mr My-Body-Is-A-Temple, desperate to fill the silence like he’s a teenage girl inviting a boy into her room for the first time. When he looks up at her, she’s pouring his scotch.

“Is this okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, yeah.” It was a gift from his mom, more expensive than she could afford but he knew she didn’t know what else to get him. He’s surprised by how much he actually doesn’t mind.

They’re drinking together as they order, Annie excitedly adding food to an already too big order and Jeff doesn’t have the heart to say no to her right now (or ever, if he’s truly honest). When it arrives, it’s almost two plastic bags’ worth of take-out boxes. “You ordered too much,” Annie scolds him drunkenly. If she didn’t look so cute, glass of scotch in hand and delicate furrow in between her brows, Jeff would almost allow himself to be mad.

“Okay two questions though,” he says when they’ve settled side by side on the floor, eating from his coffee table. He tries to make his tone somewhat serious as the alcohol curls the words around his tongue.

Annie stops arranging the food cases and chopsticks into a more organized fashion and wriggles around as she crosses her legs and pushes her hair away from her face, facing him. “Sure, go. Shoot.”

He goes for the one that’s nagging him the most first. “Uncle?”

Annie rolls her eyes. “Shirley makes it sound creepier than it actually is. Some of my classmates were talking about how we were awfully close so… I told them you were my uncle.”

“Really?” Even in Jeff’s drunken state this doesn’t quite make sense.

Annie scoffs. “Well you’re not old enough to be my dad unless like, you had a baby when you were eighteen and I don’t know, I panicked! I didn’t want them to think the reason I was getting good grades was because I was sleeping with a teacher!”

“Fine,” Jeff huffs. “But it still makes me sound… old.”

“You don’t have to be old to be an uncle,” Annie mumbles. “My, uh, my dad re-married so technically I’m an aunt to… no wait I’m a step-sister, no, that doesn’t work. But Britta’s sister had a baby really young so really Britta’s been an aunt for ages and she’s not old.”

“That’s… true,” Jeff admits. Annie smiles triumphantly and downs the rest of her scotch and fuck, Jeff needs to think about puppies being slaughtered so he doesn’t get hard.

“You said two questions,” she reminds him after he’s silent for a while.

“Holding hands at Disneyland,” he blurts out, and Annie’s smile slips a little and she traces a finger around the rim of glass.

“Ah, I. When I was little,” she says quietly, “my parents took me to Disneyland for my birthday. We only had a weekend because dad needed to get back for work and they spent the whole time arguing but I remember while we were watching the parade there was this old couple and they weren’t even watching, they were just holding hands and they looked so happy and I thought that that was what real love looked like. Like too busy being happy to even watch the Disneyland parade.”

Jeff doesn’t say anything for a while and something in his gaze makes her bashfully look away. “It used to always star Troy,” she muses, her face torn between smiling and frowning again. “My fantasy. I used to always... he was the one I wanted to... and I don’t, not anymore, and even if I did there’s Britta but I don’t.”

Annie looks at him, bites her lip. “He’s leaving, Jeff. Troy’s leaving and Pierce is dead and I was his favourite and I was so – so awful to him.”

She hiccups and chokes on the sentence, hugging herself tightly. Jeff pulls her into him without even thinking. “I never got to tell him I’m sorry,” she cries into his shoulder. “I never got to thank him.”

“He knew, Annie.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he says fiercely. And because, fuck, he’s drunk, he pulls away, cupping her face. “You’re the – you’re the best person in our group. You’re, fuck, you’re my fucking favourite too.”

Her wide, honest eyes finally lock with his at that. “Really?”

“Don’t tell the others,” he whispers conspirationally, resting his forehead on hers. “But yeah. You’re the best of the group, Annie. You always have been. Pierce knows how you felt.”

Because you wear your heart on your sleeve and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Annie’s mouth lifts into a small smile and when she sits up to give him a quick, sweet kiss it feels so natural that he barely thinks about it, even if the domesticity of it is something completely unfamiliar to him. “Come here,” he says when she pulls away, and she climbs into him lap, laying her head against his chest. He feels her mouth stretch into a yawn against his shirt.

“Do you... do you wanna just stay over?” he asks. She pulls away to look him in the eye and his heart stutters. “I don’t mean like – just right now, I don’t want to...” Be alone.

Her eyes soften with understanding. “Yeah. Yeah I want to.”

They pack away the empty cartons as best as they can, and even in her relatively intoxicated state Annie is sensible enough to put any significant amount left over into the fridge rather than leave it out all night, which Jeff totally would have done if he’d been alone. (Not that he’s ever ordered take-out for himself, late at night.)

Wordlessly, he hands her a pair of boxer shorts and a shirt he has kept from high school (which he often wears for working out as a motivation technique as it billows around him), big enough that the neckline almost slips off her shoulders. There’s a moment where he questions whether he should take the couch as he watches her daintily climb into his bed, which suddenly looks way too big with her in it but there’s this air of invitation as she looks up at him and fuck it, they’re both adults. They can handle this.

“Remember Britta’s carnie boyfriend with the stupid name?” she says after a while, turning to face him. Jeff nods; Annie must hear the movement more than she sees it. “I think – I think you’re my carnie boyfriend. I mean – I mean that I think you’re the one that I’ll never shake from my system, like Shirley said.”

“Annie.”

“You’re my favourite too,” she murmurs. Scooting closer, she touches his face with a delicacy he never thought anyone would need to, or want to, handle him with. “I stopped drawing Mrs Annie Barnes into my notebooks the second we kissed.

“You were the first boy I kissed all by myself.” Her fingers go to his mouth, letting out this little breathless, fascinated laugh, and then Jeff just can’t take it anymore; he surges forward and kisses her because it hurts not to.

“Annie,” he rasps when she starts planting tender kisses along his jaw. “Annie, you’re – to me as well, I...” He knows he wouldn’t be saying any of this if he wasn’t drunk but he can regret this tomorrow. “You’re so important. To me and I worry - fucking always...”

Annie just kisses him and they grip each other tightly and at one point they stop and she nuzzles her face into his shoulder. It might be the alcohol but Jeff has never felt this weird mix of kind of aroused and somehow totally not in the mood for taking it any further before; it settles a strange feeling in his stomach where all he wants to do is fucking hold her.

“Thanks,” he says finally.

“You’re welcome,” she says gently. Her hand finds his; Jeff can still only barely make out the shape of her in the dark. The only things he can see clearly are her eyes, steadily focused on his. He blinks once, then twice and then he can feel sleep dragging him in; anchored by Annie’s gaze and the soft grip of her fingers on his.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please rate/comment/kudos/send virtual hugs my way if you enjoyed!


End file.
